


let him be wicked still

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bonding, Fuck Or Die, Identity Issues, M/M, Mindfuck, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/587.html?thread=197195#cmt197195">this</a> prompt in the Hydra Trash Party:</p><p>WS is used as a reward for hydra operatives. Pierce's favorites are treated to alone time in a private room with a Winter Soldier who's been ordered to please and obey.</p><p>Rumlow doesn't know what he's in for his first time but he soon gets the idea when WS starts trying to get his pants off. and this isn't the sort of "reward" he signed up for so he orders WS away for the duration they're stuck in the room together.</p><p>afterwards Rumlow of course pretends like nothing's amiss - wouldn't want to seem ungrateful to hydra - and as this happens again and again WS goes from being confused to grateful, with him and Rumlow gradually building if not actual trust, a kind of rapport.</p><p>until Pierce finds out. and orders one to rape the other while he watches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _He who is wicked, let him be wicked still; and he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he who is righteous, let him do right still..._  
>  -Revelation 22:11

"What is this?" Brock asks warily. The room is bare and bland, just four walls and a bed, an ammo case open on the floor beside it. He can't really take in all that much of the decor, though, because on the other side of the room is  _him_. The Soldier. He's unmasked, stripped to the waist, unarmed as far as Brock can see. It doesn't make him look any less dangerous. If anything, he looks more deadly like this than he did cutting a bloody swath through the embassy guards a few hours earlier. At least then, Brock knew what the hell was going on.  
  
Pierce claps him on the shoulder, fingers digging in. He's got a powerful grip for a man as old as he is, and he's standing close enough for Brock to smell his expensive cologne. "It's a reward. We're very impressed with your work, Rumlow, and Hydra knows how to show its appreciation."  
  
There's no part of being trapped in a room alone with the Soldier that sounds like a reward to Brock. He admires the Asset's work, his power, his lethal grace--but he'd really rather do it from a safe distance. "Sir, I don't--"  
  
The grip turns into a shove, propelling him forward into the room. Brock looks back, and Pierce is smiling in a way that would be paternal, if sharks could be called paternal. "You have an hour. Have fun and don't break anything."  
  
And with that, he's gone. The door clicks shut, and Brock is alone with the Soldier.  
  
For a long moment, neither of them moves. The Soldier can hold himself perfectly still for hours on end in a sniper perch--Brock's seen him do it, seen him laid out like a statue, never shifting his weight, never flinching when small biting insects landed on him--and Brock is just too damn confused to move.  
  
And then the Soldier is stepping forward. Brock freezes, but there's none of the fluid confidence he displays in a fight; his posture is hesitant, almost submissive, and  _that's_  so damn strange that he doesn't even try to defend himself until the Soldier is--  
  
\--reaching to unbuckle his belt.  
  
"What the hell are you doing?" Brock asks.  
  
The Soldier doesn't answer, doesn't lift his gaze. His human hand makes quick work of the buckle and the button of Brock's BDU's, and he's starting to pull the zipper down when Brock's brain kicks into gear and he reaches out and grabs his wrist.  
  
It's warm, human, ordinary; muscle and sinew and pulse jumping beneath Brock's fingers, and Hydra has no place for naivete--he understands what this is. What his 'reward' is supposed to be.   
  
"What are you doing?" he asks again, softer, and this time the Soldier replies.  
  
"Your reward," he says. His voice is rusty, and he speaks with an American accent, and that's strange and unexpected in and of itself; Brock has never heard him speak anything other than Russian. "You've done well, and you will be rewarded."  
  
He says it flatly, like he's learned it by rote. Something twists in Brock's gut at the thought of that, the idea that someone had tried to teach him these phrases, to turn the most dangerous man Brock has ever seen into some kind of high-class hooker. Because he can't be the first. He's not that special.  
  
He pushes the Soldier's hand away and starts doing up his pants. "Yeah, that ain't happening, friend."  
  
There's a long pause, and then the Soldier lifts his gaze. It's the closest Brock has ever been to him, the first time he's gotten a good look at his face. He has blue eyes, a faint silvery scar on his cheek, dark stubble on his jaw and a generous mouth.  
  
He looks incredibly, painfully young. "I don't understand."  
  
"Nothing to understand," Brock says, tucking his belt into place. "You stay over there and I stay over here and everybody goes away happy."  
  
The Soldier's lips press together briefly, but he's too well-conditioned to argue. He turns and walks to the other side of the cell, places his back against the wall, and waits. Brock sinks down onto the bed. It's a comfortable bed, and from his angle he can see that the ammo case he noticed earlier definitely doesn't contain ammo.  
  
Christ. He rubs a hand over his face.  
  
The hour goes by very slowly.

* * *

It's Sitwell who corners him afterward. They don't exactly run in the same circles, because Brock has an actual job that includes actually accomplishing things by putting his own ass on the line, and Sitwell is the kind of soft-palmed pencil-pusher who needs other people to do his dirty work for him.

  
They're on the same side, but that doesn't mean he has to like the man. And Sitwell is in tight with Pierce, which just means more reasons to avoid him. Brock has spent enough time in the military to have a deep and abiding horror of attention from the brass.  
  
But Sitwell corners him in the stairwell after they take the Soldier down for debriefing, claps him on the shoulder and favors him with a broad wink. "Hey, Rumlow. Heard you got the VIP treatment earlier. Welcome to the fold."  
  
Brock blinks at him for a moment before it registers. Sitwell, seriously? The idea of a pasty slug like Sitwell putting his hands on the Soldier is simultaneously ridiculous and horrifying. "The VIP treatment, huh?"  
  
"You think the Director lets just anybody get cozy with the asset? It's a very exclusive club, trust me."  
  
"Lucky me," Brock deadpans, and Sitwell laughs.  
  
"You should feel honored," he says, and Brock knows exactly how true that is. You don't refuse a gift from the Caesar. But Sitwell is looking at him like he’s trying to figure out the right place to dig his little claws in, and Brock has made it his policy over the past twenty years to stay the hell out of the power plays and politics at the top of the food chain.   
  
“Oh, I am honored,” he says, and pastes a smile on his face. “But I gotta hit the road. Debriefing’s at 0600 tomorrow and I still need a shower. Hail Hydra.”  
  
“Hail Hydra,” Sitwell replies, but there’s something in his face, a sly, knowing something that Brock doesn’t like.  
  
He manages to put it out of his head by the time he’s on the highway, though. Not like there's a chance in hell of it happening again.

* * *

Except then it does.

  
It’s not even an assassination, just some routine sabotage of a DoD system that the jackasses on the ground managed to completely fuck up, to the point that there’s tracers on them and a government speedboat on its way in and they  _still_  don’t have the information they were sent in for.  
  
The dumb punk who was supposed to be in charge gets his fool head blown off, which is actually probably a mercy considering what Hydra would do to an operative who fucked up this catastrophically, and Brock thinks,  _hell with it_ , snatches up the dead idiot’s M16, and dives back into the line of fire. It’s even odds that he’ll catch a bullet for his trouble, but if he can get the data, the brass might just decide not to stick the rest of the team in front of a firing squad.  
  
It works out better than he has any right to expect, and nobody ends up dead--except for the squad leader, who pretty much deserved it--and after the debriefing he gets an audience with Pierce, who puts an arm over his shoulder and shows him to a familiar little room, and Brock almost asks, “Are you fucking kidding me?” before his sense of self-preservation kicks in.  
  
The door swings shut behind him, and he sighs. He is filthy and tired and just thoroughly fed up with this whole business. “Steak dinner,” he says out loud to no one in particular. “Tickets to the next Red Sox game. It ain’t that hard, you know? I’m not a complicated guy.”  
  
From the other side of the room the Soldier just watches him. It’s not in his nature to hesitate, but that’s exactly what it looks like he’s doing, all the same. He rocks forward on the balls of his feet, and Brock points a finger at him. “You stay there.”  
  
There’s an expression on the Soldier’s face, just a fleeting one, that looks an awful lot like relief.  
  
Brock doesn’t allow himself to consider that too closely.

* * *

The next time, he brings a deck of cards and a handful of chips.

  
“You play?” he asks, settling cross-legged on the bed and starting to shuffle. He’s expecting a blank stare, if anything, and is actually perfectly prepared to spend his hour sitting here on the damn bed playing Solitaire, but instead the Soldier inclines his head slightly.  
  
Brock raises his eyebrows. “Seriously? Alright, then, sit down and deal.”  
  
The Soldier sits down stiffly on the edge of the bed. He takes the deck Brock hands him, shuffles and cuts it neatly, like he’s done it a thousand times before. Like he’s any other soldier who’s played countless hands of poker in remote little outposts to stave off the boredom.  
  
“Five card draw, deuces wild,” he says. His voice is less rusty this time, more certain, the cadence almost normal. The accent is old-school New York, staccato Brooklyn vowels that Brock hasn't heard since his mother passed twenty years ago  
  
It’s a weird little moment of recognition, but the Soldier is looking at Brock, waiting for an answer, so he just nods. “Sure, whatever.”  
  
So they sit there and play cards together, and he loses five hands of poker to a shirtless Soviet assassin. It says something about his life, he thinks, that this isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened to him lately.  
  
They don’t talk, but at least the silence is reasonably comfortable this time. Brock isn’t sure what compels him to break it, halfway through their last hand. Something about the way the Soldier looks with his spine curved, his loose dark hair falling into his eyes and a faint crease between his brows--for a moment, he looks just like any other scarred, wary vet Brock has seen. Like a man, and not like a weapon at all.  
  
“Hey, you got a name?”  
  
The Soldier freezes minutely, then shakes his head without lifting his eyes.  
  
And that’s--Brock’s not sure what he was expecting, or why he’s even surprised. He’s never heard anyone call the Soldier by a name, he’s seen the machinery they use on him after every mission. He doesn’t know the man’s identity, but he knows that whoever he was, ages ago, he was not a willing convert to Hydra’s mission.  
  
But still.  
  
“Call,” the Soldier says quietly, and lays down his hand.

* * *

In a rooftop fight in Latvia, Brock takes a wrong step and lands with his full weight on a flimsy tin drainpipe. He feels the thin metal flex and tear beneath his feet, giving way, arms windmilling uselessly against the inevitable three-story drop--and then an inhumanly strong hand is grabbing his elbow and yanking him back to solid footing. Brock stumbles, heart pounding, and looks up to meet the Soldier’s icy blue gaze.   
  
“Thanks,” he wheezes, rubbing his elbow.  
  
The Soldier releases his arm and wades back into the fight without a word.

* * *

It shouldn’t have happened. The Soldier’s job is to complete his missions, not to waste time protecting his support team. The support team’s job is to get him in, make sure he has what he needs, and get him out again, not to slow him down.

Brock should have died, and it would have been his own fault if he had. Hydra has no place for mistakes.  
  
He’s grateful, all the same. Grateful that he didn’t end up a mess of blood and broken bones on the pavement below, and grateful that nobody saw it. It was an aberration, and he knows full well how Hydra deals with aberrations.  
  
There are no more mistakes. The assassination goes as planned, their pick-up isn’t intercepted. The Soldier takes a knife across the ribs, which Brock doesn’t even realize until they’re on the carrier and he starts stripping out of his body armor. The dark shirt underneath is soaked with blood, gaping to show pale skin and the long, shallow gash that starts at on side of his ribs and ends at his sternum. It’s still bleeding sluggishly.  
  
“Is that gonna need stitches?” Brock asks.  
  
The Soldier prods the wound with his flesh hand and shakes his head. “Superficial. No muscle damage.”  
  
“You want a bandage or something?”  
  
The guy next to him--Rollings or Roland or something like that, not one of his usual people--gives him a sideways look, which Brock ignores. It’s a four-hour flight back to base, and it won’t do any of them any good if the Soldier passes out from blood loss on the way.  
  
The Soldier looks at him for a long moment, then finally nods. Brock tosses him the first-aid kit and looks away before he can get himself in any more trouble.  
  
The thing is, he’s never been particularly tempted by the prospect of fucking the Soldier in that blank little room. He’s been with hookers once or twice, and the experience always left a bad taste in his mouth--and unlike the streetcorner girls in Seol, that quiet, submissive version of the Soldier likely wouldn’t even fake like he’s enjoying it. He doesn’t fuck people who don’t want to fuck him, and even so he’s not into guys, so there’s never been any real chance of him deciding to take Pierce’s reward.  
  
But he’s watching the Soldier bandage his own wound, hands quick and sure, and he’s thinking back to that rooftop fight, the impossible grace of the man as he twisted and dodged a bloody, violent dance through the  _policija_  who’d come after them, and it’s like there’s something hot and glowing at the pit of his stomach.  
  
This version of the Soldier, this ferocious, deadly weapon in human form--if  _this_  was on the table, he’d take it in a heartbeat.  
  
It’s not, though. The Soldier only really seems to come to life when he’s killing. The rest of the time, he’s a quiet, obedient ghost. Outside of the field, it’s like he’s barely there at all.

* * *

 Sitwell is there to take the Soldier into custody when they land. He smiles at Brock as he passes, and Brock smiles back. It’s almost genuine, even; between the lingering relief of not being dead and the prospect of sleeping in his own bed for the first time in a week, he’s feeling pretty pleased with the world and his place in it, willing to tolerate even Sitwell, at least as long as it takes to sit through a debriefing.

  
For the first time in a while, Pierce doesn’t show him to the Soldier’s little room afterward. Brock doesn’t think much of it.  
  
In retrospect, that’s a very serious mistake.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The briefing the next morning is at 0600, and he's very nearly late.

When he gets there, the blinds are drawn, the vast conference room shadowy. Alexander Pierce is leaning against the window, coffee up in one hand, back to the door. It’s a calculated, deliberate pose, one that radiates power and confidence. No holster mars the clean, tailored lines of his suit. Even here, in the heart of SHIELD, he doesn’t have to watch his back. Even here, he doesn’t have to carry a weapon.  
  
Other than Pierce, the room is empty. The screen is dark. There are no briefing packets to be seen. Brock stops in the doorway, feeling something leaden and fearful settle into his gut. “Sir?”  
  
“Have a seat,” Pierce says without turning, so he does. The military has long since beat the urge to fidget out of him, but he’s tense with it all the same, nerves humming, fingers twitching for a weapon. Lizard-brain shit, fucking useless. If Pierce decides he wants him dead, he’s gonna die, and that’s just the way it is.  
  
Pierce lets the silence stretch out for several agonizing moments, then turns. His face is open, genial, a slight smile settled comfortably on his lips. He looks pleasant, grandfatherly, even, and the sight makes Brock’s balls want to crawl back inside his body in a futile effort at self-preservation. He’s seen Pierce wear that exact same expression while shooting an incompetent subordinate in the gut and leaving her to bleed out on the fine Turkish carpet of his office. Didn’t even flinch. “So. Rumlow.”  
  
“Sir,” Brock says. There’s no fear in his voice, because fear is useless. Messy. It has no place in Hydra’s neatly ordered world.  
  
(The Soldier doesn’t feel fear, he thinks, somewhat nonsensically. It’s true, of course, in the sense that the Soldier doesn’t seem to feel much of anything at all, but.)  
  
“Your work has been very impressive lately. You’re a top-notch operative.”  
  
“Thank you, sir,” Brock says helplessly.  
  
“What I don’t understand,” Pierce continues, and he’s  _smiling_  now, “is what we can do to motivate you to sustain that level of excellence. Since it appears that our current rewards system is unappealing to you.”  
  
Brock blinks, for several seconds genuinely baffled. Then it sinks in.  
  
“I--” he begins.  
  
“Is it the gender?” Pierce moves around the table until he’s close enough to reach out and touch Brock, a shade inside what he subconsciously defines as a comfortable distance. It’s deliberate, of course. Everything Pierce does is deliberate. “I understand that some of our men have an unfortunate hang-up in that regard.”   
  
Brock opens his mouth, then shuts it again.  
  
“But I don’t think that’s it, somehow. I’ve seen you looking at him. Do you think I give just anyone the chance to put their grubby paws on the asset?” Brock doesn’t say anything. “Answer me.”  
  
“No, sir. I don’t think you do.”  
  
“No. I don’t. And you don’t mind looking, but given the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak--” Again, that terrifying smile. “You decide to teach him poker.”  
  
“I didn’t--” Brock shuts his mouth. There were cameras. Of course there were cameras. This is Hydra. Everything is a test.  
  
“Something you want to say, Rumlow?”  
  
He doesn’t let himself look away. Smooths out his expression until there’s just respect there, just deference, no fear. “Just that I didn’t teach him poker, sir. He already knew how to play.”  
  
Pierce stares at him for a long moment, then laughs. “You know what, I like you, Rumlow. I think I’m not going to kill you.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.”  
  
The door behind them swings open, footsteps on the thick carpet. Brock doesn’t turn around. Pierce looks over his head and smiles. “Provided, of course, that you’re a bit more appreciative in the future. Thank you, boys. You can go now.”  
  
Brock does turn then, in time to see the two guards turn on their heels and leave the room. There’s just the Soldier. He’s naked, barefoot on the carpeted floor. His hands hang loosely at his sides. His face is blank.  
  
When Brock looks back toward Pierce, a small derringer has materialized on the gleaming conference table. He looks from it up to Pierce’s face, and the Director inclines his head toward the Soldier, still smiling his grandfatherly smile. “Well, go on then. Don’t let me stop you.”

The gun is an antique, clearly expensive and not a make he recognizes, dark wood and silver inlay on the blunt muzzle. Pierce’s hand rests on the table beside it, an old man’s hand with knotted knuckles and the suggestion of liver spots. Still steady, though.  
  
“Problem, Rumlow?”  
  
“No, sir,” he says automatically. There’s a small, incredulous part of his brain that’s hysterically demanding an explanation, but he squashes it firmly. The Soldier might be irreplaceable, but Brock isn’t. And if Pierce feels the need to assert his power--to make a point--whatever the hell it is he’s doing--  
  
They wipe the Soldier after every mission. He won’t even remember this.  
  
He stands up, turns to face the Soldier. Lets himself look the way he hasn’t, recently. The Soldier doesn’t try to hunch in or hide his nakedness; he stands with his feet apart, weight balanced, shoulders loose. There’s nothing in his posture to indicate discomfort, but Brock can sense it all the same.  
  
Or, fuck it, maybe he’s just projecting.  
  
“Do you need some help getting things started?” Pierce asks pleasantly from behind him when the silence has stretched out for what feels like hours.  
  
Brock shakes his head, clears his throat. “No, sir,” he says again. He crosses the room to stand in front of the Soldier. This close, he can smell sweat and soap and gunpowder, and underneath it all something else, a faint metallic odor like flash-fried pennies.  
  
He’s hard already, he realizes. Adrenaline, maybe. Or maybe not.  
  
He reaches out and runs his hand down the metal arm, the one that could throw him across the room or snap his neck as easy as breathing. It’s cool to the touch but not cold, the faint grooves and curving edges catching at his fingertips. He curls his fingers around the Soldier’s palm and brings it to his crotch.  
  
There’s a slight intake of breath, quiet--he wouldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t so close, if he wasn’t paying attention--and then the Soldier curls his inhumanly strong fingers around Brock’s dick and starts jerking him slowly through the rough fabric of his BDU’s. It’s just on the sweet side of painful, and Brock bites his lip to keep from cursing out loud, acutely aware that Pierce is still sitting two yards away, watching.  
  
The Soldier is looking down, dark hair falling into his eyes. His skin is unnaturally pale, scattered with faint scars. He’s uncut and completely flaccid.  
  
Brock lets out a deep, shuddering breath and pushes his hand away. The Soldier lets it drop. He doesn’t look up. There’s something panicky twisting in Brock’s gut, because even naked and unarmed the Soldier could kill them both before they had time to blink, but he’s just standing there, and he plays poker and speaks English with a Brooklyn accent, and this feels like--  
  
\--exactly what it is.  
  
“You have to tell him what to do,” Pierce says after they’ve both been standing there for some indeterminate amount of time. He still sounds amused. “He’s not very creative, I’m afraid.”  
  
Brock closes his eyes. Too much to hope that that was enough of a show. He’s gonna have to get naked. And the Soldier-- “Get on your knees.”  
  
There’s a faint rustle of sound as the Soldier obeys. Brock reaches out and touches his hair. It’s softer than he would have expected, and the Soldier doesn’t flinch when his fingers catch on tangles. He opens his eyes and runs a hand down down the Soldier’s face, the strong jaw and soft mouth. His fingertip catches on his lower lip and drags it down slightly.  
  
Blue eyes flick toward him, then away. It’s not much of an expression, but it’s enough to make the idea of the Soldier’s mouth suddenly a lot less appealing.  
  
It’d be easier, Brock thinks, if he looked angry instead of just resigned.  
  
“What do you usually do?” he asks. He’s not sure why. It’s not going to make this any better to know. “When people--what do they usually ask for?”  
  
The Soldier glances up at him again. For a moment Brock thinks he’s not going to answer, then Pierce says indulgently, “You can tell him.”  
  
“My mouth,” the Soldier says, and drops his gaze. His voice is flat and quiet. “Most people like my mouth. Or the hand. The metal one. Like you did.” He shrugs with one shoulder, the human one. “Mostly, they don’t touch me much.”  
  
That makes sense. The Soldier is incredibly dangerous, for one thing, no matter how docile he might be acting in any given moment. It would take a very stupid person to forget that, and stupid people don’t usually survive long in Hydra. For another--well, that’s not really what a post-mission fuck is _for_ , is it?  
  
When he touches the Soldier’s cheek this time, it’s not calculated; it’s barely intentional. Smooth skin and the roughness of stubble, and Brock keeps touching him as he sinks down to his knees, runs a hand over the curve of his shoulder and down his scarred chest to grip the sharp jut of his hip.   
  
He’s trembling. It’s just a little, not visible, but with his hands on him Brock can feel it. It makes some rarely-used part of his conscience contract painfully.  
  
“Hey,” he says stupidly. “It’s okay.”  
  
The Soldier nods, but it doesn’t really look like agreement. Acceptance, maybe. Or resignation.  
  
“I have to say, this really doesn’t look like appreciation to me,” Pierce says from behind him, and Brock just barely controls his startle. For one insane, critical moment, he managed to forget that the director was there at all.  
  
The Soldier flinches hard, then stills.  
  
“That’s alright, though, I understand,” Pierce continues. “It’s a difficult decision, I can appreciate that. So I’m going to make it for you. You’re going to fuck him, Rumlow, and you’re going to do it properly, or I’m going to send you down to the sub-levels to get your ass reamed out by the black bag psychos.” He smiles, all teeth. “There’s lube in the case, there.”  
  
Brock looks down. There’s the ammo case that they always leave in the room with the Soldier, the one with the multitude of goodies. He didn’t even notice it.  
  
He swallows twice, then reaches out and snags a bottle from the top of the pile. It’s high-grade stuff with an iridescent cap, which he fumbles getting off. The Soldier tracks his hands with wary eyes.  
  
“You know how to get yourself ready?” Brock asks him, and after a long moment he nods. “Good. Here.”  
  
After an infinitesimal hesitation, the Soldier takes the lube from Brock’s hand. He shifts his weight, spreading his knees on the thick carpet, slicks the fingers of his human hand and reaches back. Brock can’t see what he’s doing from this angle, but he breathes in sharply, head falling back, teeth digging into his lower lip. His metal hand flexes, then stills. The tremor is more pronounced more, enough that Brock can see it, see his hair shiver with every breath and the tautness of the long muscles in his thighs.  
  
His cock twitches; he’s starting to get hard, which Brock can only imagine is a reflex or something. It’s that, of all things, that feels bizarrely indecent to be watching, but he can’t quite make himself stop.  
  
It’s not like he’s never been with a guy, anyway. It just isn’t his usual thing.  
  
It feels like an age later when the Soldier finally pulls his fingers out and wipes them clean on the carpet. He shoots a glance in Pierce’s direction when he does. It’s defiance, Brock realizes--a small, pointless defiance, but still.  
  
“Ready,” the Soldier says without looking at Brock. His voice is flat, and if Brock were a better man he’d be having trouble keeping it up through all this, but he isn't and he doesn't.  
  
He undoes his pants and pulls his dick out, the cool air a shock on his sensitive skin. Fumbles a condom out of the pile and rolls it on, slicks himself up. The Soldier falls forward obediently to a hand between his shoulders. He doesn’t make a noise when Brock lines up and pushes into him. He doesn’t try to fight it at all.  
  
(could kill him, could kill him with one hand and his eyes closed, without even thinking about it but he’s just kneeling there with his face down and his legs spread,  _taking it_ , and it’s fucked up beyond belief and also the hottest thing Brock has felt in a long, long time)  
  
“Fuck,” Brock breathes when he bottoms out. His hands are on the Soldier’s hips, gripping hard enough to bruise. He makes himself let go, palms skittering up and over the Soldier’s flat stomach, the flex and twist of hard muscle under the skin, down over the fronts of his thighs. It’s almost an accident when he brushes up against the Soldier’s cock, but the Soldier breathes in sharply, cock jumping against Brock’s hand, and Brock has wrapped his fingers around it and started jerking him off before he really thinks about what he’s doing.  
  
It’s only fair, anyway.  
  
For an instant, there’s no reaction at all, and then the Soldier practically  _melts_  against him, breath catching in his throat, breathing out a small, lost, broken noise that makes Brock wonder if this wasn’t the crueler option after all. He doesn’t stop, though.  
  
“Come on,” he’s muttering, breath coming fast against the Soldier’s hot skin, the taste of salt on his lips. “Yeah, come on, like that,” and the Soldier arches, bites back something that sounds almost like a sob, and comes.  
  
Brock buries his face in the tangle of thick dark hair, hips snapping forward, and when the orgasm hits it’s like a full-body blow, whiting out his vision and shaking him to pieces.

* * *

He’s muzzily aware of pulling out, of sinking to the floor with the Soldier wrapped in his arms. The Soldier doesn’t try to pull away, but he’s tense, wired with it, and Brock is aware that he really should let go now. He doesn’t, though, not until he hears the soft, measured sound of Pierce’s expensive shoes on the carpet.

Something soft hits him in the chest, and he looks up, blinking, to meet Pierce’s eyes. The handkerchief is fine muslin, monogrammed in ornate red stitching.  
  
“Get yourself cleaned up,” Pierce says. “We have work to do.”

* * *

After

He wakes sometime in the night. The morphine drip is enough to make his head thick and the pain distant, but he can feel it all the same, a dark ocean of it lapping at the edges of the painkillers. He’s not handcuffed, but there are guards at the door and in his current state he’d be surprised if he can stand without falling over.  
  
It takes him a long time to register that there’s someone in the room with him. A dark, motionless shadow in the chair by the window. Brock blinks, and the shadow resolves into the shape of the Winter Soldier.  
  
His heart thumps sharply in his chest. “The guards--” he whispers hoarsely.  
  
The Soldier shrugs. Brock doesn’t know if he should take that to mean that they’re dead, or not. Finds he doesn’t much care one way or another. “Are you here to kill me?”  
  
For several long moments, the Soldier just stares at him. His hair has been cut, a rough uneven job that he almost certainly did himself. He’s wearing dark jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that hangs too loose on his powerful frame, makes him look smaller and younger than he is. His cheeks are dark with stubble. He looks tired.  
  
Finally, he shakes his head slowly. “James,” he says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“My name. It’s James.”  
  
Brock nods. It pulls at something in his neck and shoulders in a deep, unpleasant way. “James Barnes,” he says. “Bucky Barnes.”  
  
He heard what Cap said, the way he whispered the name like he was speaking to a ghost. Hard to believe he didn’t figure it out beforehand--he’s  _been_ to the damn museum, for Chrissake. He’s seen the pictures, the laughing young man with the old-fashioned haircut, dogtags gleaming around his neck.  
  
Another long pause, and then the Soldier--James Barnes, World War II hero and Captain America’s best friend (Hydra assassin and Alexander Pierce’s personal fucktoy)--nods. “James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. Three-two-five-five-seven-one-five-nine.”  
  
His voice is flat, mechanical even, but his face is tight, and Brock is suddenly struck anew by the total fucking pointlessness of Pierce’s little power trip. Killing a man like Barnes might have been necessary--justifiable, even. For peace, for order, for the ideals he still believes in. But what they did instead--what  _he_  did instead--  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it more than he has in a long time.  
  
Barnes unfolds out of the chair, as smooth and graceful and lethal as ever. His metal hand gleams in the darkness. Brock closes his eyes.  
  
He’s expecting at any moment to feel the bite of steel at his throat, but it doesn’t come.  
  
When he opens his eyes again, the room is empty.


End file.
